CONDOLENCES

Dr LEIGH (Fenner—Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury) (18:56): It's a pleasure to follow my friend and colleague the member for Berowra in rising to pay tribute to the Hon. Justice Mary Genevieve Gaudron KC, former Justice of the High Court of Australia. I came to know Justice Gaudron when I worked as associate to Justice Michael Kirby from 1997 to 1998.

She was generous, confident, warm and funny. She took an interest in the associates and treated us with kindness. Justice Gaudron was born in Moree in 1943.

She won a scholarship to the University of Sydney and graduated with the University Medal. She was the first female part-time student to receive the medal. She was admitted to the New South Wales bar in 1968.

In 1972, she became the first woman appointed to the New South Wales Bar Council. She appeared for the Commonwealth before the arbitration commission in the equal pay case. In 1974, aged 31, she became a deputy president of the commission.

She later regarded the equal pay case and the maternity leave case as among the highlights of her career. The latter helped establish a general federal award standard of up to 52 weeks' unpaid maternity leave. Her concern with equality was constant throughout her professional life.

In 1981, Justice Gaudron became Solicitor-General for New South Wales. She was the first woman to hold that office in any Australian state. Soon afterwards, she became the first woman in New South Wales to be appointed Queen's Counsel.

As Solicitor-General, she appeared frequently before the High Court, including in the Tasmanian dam case. The Australian Law Journal described her advocacy as 'outstanding and ingenious'. In 1987, at the age of 44, Justice Gaudron was appointed to the High Court of Australia.

She was the first woman to serve on the court and the only woman to serve on the court during its first century. Naomi Sharp SC, one of Justice Gaudron's former associates, remembers her truly incredible intellect, her elegant, persuasive and relentlessly logical reasoning and her leading role in the court's chapter III jurisprudence. She also recalls Justice Gaudron's strength of character, her steadfast integrity and her belief that we are always diminished by the absence of equality.

Justice Gaudron made significant contributions to the law governing native title, judicial power, equality and the freedom of political communication. In Mabo, she and Justice Deane described the dispossession of Aboriginal peoples as the darkest aspect of the history of this nation. In Dietrich, she joined the majority in recognising that the right to a fair trial could justify a stay where an indigent accused faced serious charges without legal representation.

In Australian Capital Television, she helped shape the implied freedom of political communication. In Kable, she joined the majority in holding that state parliaments could not confer functions on state courts that were incompatible with their place in an integrated national judicial system. Her thinking about equality also shaped her constitutional jurisprudence.

In Street v Queensland Bar Association, and later in Castlemaine Tooheys, she developed the idea that discrimination could involve the unequal treatment of equals and the equal treatment of unequals. Her chapter III judgements emphasised equal treatment under law, judicial independence and the requirement that judicial power be exercised according to judicial process.

In Leeth, she would have invalidated a law under which Commonwealth offenders could receive different treatment depending on the state or territory in which they were tried. In Wilson, she joined the majority in holding invalid a law that directed judges to perform functions threatening public confidence in the judiciary. Former Gaudron, associate Rick Kalowski's entry in the Oxford companion to the High Court of Australia describes Justice Gaudon as a rigid logician, while noting her reluctance to depart from precedent without carefully reconsidering its correctness.

Haroon Hassan, who also served as her associate, recalls what Justice Gaudron was like to work for: She devoured information and could cut to the heart of a complex appeal with a single withering question. She … drafted her judgements longhand, in purple ink from a trusted fountain pen. She edited rigorously.

As Haroon puts it, 'No sentence that could not justify itself survived.' He also recalls that she was 'impatient with incompetence and pomposity, but unfailingly courteous to those without power, from the most, junior counsel to the court attendants and registry staff' and, I should add, the associates. Justice Gaudron was also great company. Naomi Sharp remembers her as a tremendous entertainer and a gifted and witty raconteur whose humour ran to the wicked.

She recalls that Justice Gaudron could literally hold court and was known to spring into Irish songs. Haroon Hassan remembers her irrepressible sense of fun, her compassion and her commitment to social justice. Her impromptu champagne parties were, he says, the stuff of legend.

He recalls Justice Gaudron in full flight, cigarette in one hand and champagne glass in the other, telling stories in gravelly tones. Rick Kalowski remembers how little interest she had in burnishing her own reputation. When he tried to fact check details of her life for that entry, she became angry with him for doing so.

Rick says, 'That's how modest she truly was.' Her loyalty was also demonstrated after the death of Justice Murphy in 1986. Kalowski recalls that Justice Gaudron spoke powerfully at his memorial service at the Sydney Town Hall to a packed audience. Former Gaudron associate Fiona Phillips recalls that when Justice Gaudron and Justice Toohey were appointed to the High Court the following year, Justice Gaudron asked to take what had been Justice Murphy's chambers.

Phillips notes that Justice Murphy was somewhat of a pariah at the time and regards the decision as characteristic of Justice Gaudron's loyalty and fearlessness. As her colleague on the bench, Justice Michael Kirby recalls Justice Gaudron's unwavering support for women's equality; for him and his partner, Johan van Vloten; and for members of minorities. He remembers her as a strong and consistent champion of article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

Justice Gaudron's example stirred others. Gina Cass-Gottlieb recalls how inspiring it was as a young lawyer to see the first woman appointed to the High Court. She recalls Justice Gaudron mentoring many women lawyers and told me simply, 'She really was loved.' Naomi Sharp describes Justice Gaudron as someone who blasted past every closed door, paving the way for generations of grateful women who followed.

Her former associates remember her generosity with her time and support and the privilege of having her in their lives. Haroon Hassan writes that Justice Gaudron's legacy lies partly in the proposition she embodied that the highest court in its land is strengthened by voices that had, until 1987, never been heard there. He observes that many women who have since been sworn into superior courts have followed a path she trod alone for far too long.

Justice Gaudron served on the High Court until 2003. She then served as a judge of the International Labor Organisation's Administrative Tribunal from 2003 to 2012, including as its president from 2009 to 2011. Justice Gaudron changed the law and changed the legal profession.

She was kind to her associates and served as the mentor to many. Mary Gaudron helped make Australia a fairer and more inclusive country, and she reminded those around her that being a leader doesn't mean you have to stop enjoying life. To her family, friends, colleagues and former associates, I offer my condolences.